All posts filed under: Gender

Atsumi is twenty-three years old. She has been living in an Internet-Café for two months. She works as a waitress at a coffeehouse, but she may lose the job if the owner finds that she has become homeless. When she was in high school, her father died of cancer, her mother left her, and she withdrew from school. A loan shark has been chasing her after the first loan. She has scarcely been surviving alone (Suzuki 2014: 16-36). Introduction It was in 2015 that the “hinkon joshi,”or women in poverty, which include the likes of Atsumi, suddenly gained public attention in Japan. A documentary by NHK discussed the shocking fact that a third of working women in Japan were poor. Even if they marry, becoming a “wife” would not give them any advantage in contemporary Japanese society; matrimony has not become a realistic measure for women to escape from poverty (NHK Research Group 2014: 64-65). This feminization of poverty is worrying for a country suffering from a declining birth rate. In this essay, I will …

Duterte’s statement echoes what many in the Philippines believe – that it is normal for men to be philanderers because it is written in their biological make-up. Many believe that men are naturally macho, and women, naturally feminine, because the sexes are born that way.

Why have reactions to Charice’s coming out been so harsh? Was it because she was popular, unlike the regular “tomboys” we see around our neighborhoods or in school? Was it because she was merely a kid when she came out of the closet?

The movie Fifty Shades has drawn much interest, concern, and criticism from different people around the world. People have shown different and conflicting attitudes toward the film with some commending the film and some bashing the film extensively. The film, based on the book written by British author E.L. James, was about the love story between a literature major Anastacia Steele and the young and wealthy entrepreneur, Christian Grey.

Black and white. Chess, seen as a fight between two opposing kingdoms, reflects the clash between groups in society. The photo showing a white king standing on top of two black rooks emphasizes how one race in society can be more favored than another race

The point is: weddings enable and constrain, and I feel most couples prefer a ceremony that’s more enabling than constraining. The choice of some couples to defray all wedding expenses (as was the case in the two weddings I attended) is a subtle attempt of bride and groom to lessen that constraint, wield a little power, and assert their independence. (Image from tuscanaresort.com)

You might be thinking that this endeavor is foolish, knowing full well that everything is sociological and anthropological, but there are those that occur that make us stop in our tracks and rethink where humanity is now, and where it is going (or not going, for that matter), and those are the events we revisit in this year-end countdown.